Can someone break down the simple meaning of object oriented programming???

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PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice. When you get to the point where the majority of this book makes sense to you, not only will you be able to understand "why" it's useful, but you'll also want to use classes/objects.

"Please give us a simple answer, so that we don't have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don't fit the way we want the world to be."
~ Terry Pratchett in Nation

That book costs money, don't you think I should just buy a subscription to Lynda.com which comes with all the tutorials?

Everyone learns differently. I know nothing about lynda.com, but I do know that that book helped me a lot. In general, I find web tutorials may help you learn syntax (and may not), but seldom really teach you the underlying theory. Maybe lynda.com is different, maybe they're the best thing since sliced bread for learning PHP, but I have no way to say yes or no about them.

Every program has tasks (for example get user credentials)
Within the task of getting user credentials, there are steps (authenticate to the database, retreive the record, and return the user info)
Therefore that one task knows the predefined steps to get the result.

An easy explanation might be: to logically group tasks with relevant methods and variables to get a result from minimal input...a side effect might be easily updating functions (called 'methods' within the class)

Over the last couple of months, I been teaching myself PHP and it's within the last couple of months that OOP is sinking into my brain. I still have a little more ways to go, but I'm getting there. What I am finding out is that you can even add an extra level of security using OOP, because you can protect certain code with protected or private functions or at the very least write code that makes sense (Once the Light Bulb turns on). The code isn't thrown in a hap hazard way like procedural programming can be. Though procedural programming has it's place like for smaller projects or for a quick fix.

Once last thing, I am finally getting almost done with a blogging site that I started doing and I started doing it the procedural way then switched over to OOP. While I was programming it the procedural way I used the dreaded goto statement to get a certain section of code working properly. I have been programming in other languages over the years and never had to use the goto statement. I was sure depressed that night, but I think it is what got me motivated to learn Object-Oriented Programming. It might be a hassle starting out, but once that light bulb kicks in it will be like discovering a new flavor of ice cream.

... It might be a hassle starting out, but once that light bulb kicks in it will be like discovering a new flavor of ice cream.

Almost everyone I know who started out learning to program procedurally but who then learned OOP had the same sort of revelation if they kept at it: the proverbial light bulb went off, and there was no going back to procedural coding except for simple, one-off tasks (and sometimes even then when they realized they weren't quite so simple after all).

"Please give us a simple answer, so that we don't have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don't fit the way we want the world to be."
~ Terry Pratchett in Nation

The object oriented environment.

Object oriented programming gives the ability to manipulate the regular features of any system that can be described in computable terms. Computable systems can be general in nature or specific in their interaction with the world. OOP provides ways to descibe the general case and also allows the programmer to narrow that general case down into several types of specific uses, using a minimalist approach.

There is a specific syntax used to describe systems in the OO environment, which includes, the properties of the system, methods that outline how those properties interact with each other, and with its environment, along with a number of pedagogical syntatical features, like classes, constructor, destructor, abstract classes, new, extends, overrides, private, public and a whole lot more to be discovered when learning the OO environment.

Knowledge is that which can be shown to be the case, and Intelligence is the method one uses to deploy the demonstration of what is the case, everything else is Information.